Lighting systems are important navigational aids for aircrafts, boats, or other vehicles, in providing guidance, signaling, and demarcation functions therefore. In certain military or emergency navigation applications, the lighting system is required to be reconfigurable, such as changing the number of runway, taxiway, threshold, runway end and obstruction lights according to momentary needs. It is also desirable to have sensor units embedded in the lighting apparatus for automatically controlling their operation according to their geographic locations.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,659,676 issued to Hwang discloses a lighting system which includes a GPS receiver for calculating sunrise time and sunset time from an inputted GPS signal and outputting an on/off signal according to the calculated sunrise time and sunset time, and a security light configured to be turned on/off in response to the on/off signal.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,798,669 issued to Trojanowski et al. discloses a remotely adjustable lighting device configured to an operational mode customized for the geographic location of the device. The lighting device is powered by a battery provided with solar charging. The lighting device is turned off and on for an illumination period as a function of both local sunrise and sunset times determined by a combination of time and date information and GPS positioning.
None of the above cited patents addresses the issue of automatically reconfiguring a runway lighting system according to momentary military or emergency navigational needs.